Presentation given by Barbara Kemp, assistant dean for public services, and Damon Camille, training, assessment and statistics coordinator, University of Houston.
Resume -- Counter to popular wisdom its okay to have more than one page provided information is relevant to the profession or particular position. (This may be especially true if you are coming with prior work experience from a different industry.) Use strong words and don’t sell yourself short. Don’t list all your courses as that information can come from your transcript, but do include tangible products from courses, such as web sites if you developed them.
Organizational Culture – successful strategy for any career path is to understand your organization’s culture. You can do this in a number of ways.
- Listen: to what people say; discover the myths and legends of the work place to determine what is considered important. Look around, see who the leaders are; how people dress, when they come to work, leave, time for lunch… these are some of the basic behaviors of the group. Observing them will help you learn to fit in.
- Learn: read the mission statement; what an organization has taken the effort and time to write down and codify is important. This gives clues to the culture and if you are interested in the environment.
Finally, be a team player and stay positive. To become a valued member of any organization takes time and effort, but these insights will help you adjust to an organization’s culture and help decide if it’s right for you.
Panel discussion on "Cool Jobs."
This discussion was particularly illuminating for those interested in business libraries. A nice change, as these types of special libraries are less talked over in librarianship forums.
Basic plusses given for corporate libraries include: relatively better pay than school or academic librarianship, dynamic working environment, and larger spending budgets.
Basic downside may be long hours as typical in the corporate world; libraries are usually composed of a very small staff – one professionally degreed head librarian with support staff of two or three nonprofessionals or graduate students.
Basic advice for locating a job in corporate world: Networking! Library jobs may be referred to in nontraditional terms, such as information specialists.
Favorite Quote: “We eat our own Dog Food” – given by Margaret Carroll describing Microsoft philosophy about testing and using their own products before they are released to the general public.
(please see prior posting for participants names and businesses)
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These are just a small sampling of the career advice given at TLA among other learning opportunities available. This was my first experience at the convention and I found it very empowering and would recommend all students to participate if possible.
Monica Rivero
LISSA, Secretary
3 comments:
Great stuff, thanks for sharing, Monica! I was sorry to miss Barbara Kemp's "Get That Job and Love It" presentation, so it was nice to at least get a recap from a fellow student.
~ Erin Dorris
Yes, thanks for the recap. I was wanting to go to this session, definitely. This is the 2nd or 3rd time I've missed a TLA conference that came to Houston--aargh! There were also some good updates on RDA, aka "AACR3", Electronic Resources Management (ERM), and other stuff appealing to academic librarians. I know TLA has been criticized in the past for concentrating exclusively on public and k-12 librarianship to the exclusion of academic librarians, but this year they really outdid themselves in providing sessions directly relevant to academic librarians.
--John J. Ronald
thanks John and Erin for your input. I didn't realize TLA had had that kind of criticism. I find that interesting b/c some of the smaller TLA events I had attend were focused on school librarianship, which sort of turned me off them. But the big conference definitely had a wider scope! Thank goodness.
--Monica Rivero
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